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Who Dey Revolution Manifesto

Preamble

IN THIS TIME of perpetual Cincinnati Bengals incompetence and futility, with zero playoff wins in the nineteen seasons since the WhoDeyRevolution Godfather, Paul Brown, passed away in 1991 and handed the team to his fortunate son, the Despot, Mike Brown;

Introduction

WE, the members of the Who Dey Revolution, in our fervent dedication to the Cincinnati Bengals and fanatical desire to transform our hometown team into perpetual Super Bowl contenders, call for a popular revolution of fans to demand comprehensive reform to the managerial decisions and approach of Cincinnati Bengals ownership, management, staff and players, and hereby call for the adoption of the following Who Dey Revolution Manifesto:

Manifesto Demands

THAT the Mike Brown, Katie Blackburn, Marvin Lewis, along with every other member of the Bengals management, staff and personnel, state publicly to all Bengals fans, “I will do everything in my power to help the Cincinnati Bengals win a Super Bowl;”

THAT Mike Brown will hire a general manager, drastically expand the scouting department and relinquish all control of player personnel;

THAT all training, rehabilitation and medical facilities are considered best-in-class compared to other NFL teams;

THAT the management fill the team only with players who fit the system, both mentally and physically, and are not reluctant to makes changes to player personnel when needed, regardless of cost or loyalty concerns;

THAT offensive and defensive line depth is considered the top priority for all player personnel decisions;

THAT all decisions made by ownership, management, staff and players, both on and off the field, are judged only by this criterion: “Does this help the Cincinnati Bengals win a Super Bowl?”

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i change my mind whenever the hell i want to change my mind

September 13, 2010

The title of this post is a hilarious and curt quote said by John Maynard Keynes in response to someone calling him out for switching his position on some issue. Recently, I've read some stuff that makes me thinks the facts have changed about the Bengals. And so I'm going to write a really long, wordy post about it.

Sometime last week, blinded by my irrational love for TJ I got into a comment back and forth with tide182. He did not like TJ. I did. The argument basically went like this:

Tide: stop talking about TJ, he was way overrated

Me (feeling very smug): yes, him and his awesome stats (which I threw out) were overrated, riiiiight, why don't you back up your argument with actual facts?

Tide: (throws out tons of more detailed and better contextual stats) here is why he was overrated, he's also old, let's all move on

Me: yeah...well...fuck you

The point? Do not argue stats with tide182. But in that argument tide182 graciously reintroduced me to a site that I had forgotten to visit for quite awhile, ProFootballFocus, which charts the performance of every player, on every play of every game. They then grade the players. This makes PFF's performance evaluation, even despite inevitable flaws, about a zillion times more methodical, objective and elaborate than almost any casual fan and a majority of professional analysts as well.

March 11, 2010

When you find yourself refreshing Joe Reedy's tweets and ProFootballTalk every 15 minutes for a few days, it's safe to say you might be losing the forest for the trees. I never before so much as waded into the pool of manic free agency update obsession, but I dove in head first this year.

I am wondering if that made my judgment worse.

We signed Antonio Bryant. At first a supporter of making a big run at Marshall, I talked myself into Bryant being a better football and business decision over the course of my posts.

But as with all large purchases, sometimes you can't tell how you really feel until you finally buy it and bring it home. And the more I reflect, the less good I feel about it.

But my issue is not necessarily with Bryant, who will hopefully be a fine player and solid complement to Chad, it is more with what it says about the Brown Family. I credited them yesterday with landing the top UFA out there. But really, why did they deserve much credit when:

They put themselves in the position of needing to take expensive chances on free agent receivers in the first place by letting TJ go and squandering many draft picks on WRs who so far have not produced

They merely replaced the Coles contract they planned on having with a slightly more expensive contract for Bryant (front-loaded payments for Coles 4 year, $7 mil/year deal do mean the Bengals did cost themselves more than just keeping Coles without replacing him)

They chose to forgo the bold opportunity (albeit not without risk) to majorly upgrade the offense and secure a top wide receiving talent for a long time - probably balking at cost. But with non-guaranteed contracts and the Bengals track record of drafting, neither the cost of the contract or the loss of a draft pick would be able to derail the franchise for any extended period of time

The Bryant deal was nice. But unlike my initial thoughts, I don't think it signals any change in the way Mikey does things. A run at Marshall would have. I once wrote the Bengals basic strategy in the draft was to "dream small and give fans the middle finger", and I feel like perhaps this move represents a less egregious version of that.

In the end, Antonio Bryant plus our first round draft pick may end up exceeding in value what we might have gotten out of Marshall. However, instead of making the boldest move possible, our management just made a decently savvy swap of Coles for Bryant. I guess it's nice to see they do make some savvy moves these days, instead of approximately zero savvy moves from 1991-2002, but this signing does not represent a meaningful departure from the past.